Group III-V compound semiconductor, such as gallium nitride (GaN), gallium arsenide (GaAs), indium nitride (InN), aluminum nitride (AlN) and gallium phosphide (GaP), are widely used in the manufacture of electronic devices, such as microwave frequency integrated circuits, light-emitting diodes, laser diodes, solar cells, high-power and high-frequency electronics, and opto-electronic devices. To improve throughput and reduce manufacturing cost it is desired to increase size (e.g., diameter) of substrates. Because growing III-V compound semiconductors of large size is very expensive a great number of foreign materials including metals, metal oxides, metal nitrides as well as semiconductors, such as silicon carbide (SiC), sapphire and silicon, are commonly used as substrates for epitaxial growth of III-V compound semiconductors.
However, epitaxy growth of group III-V compound semiconductors (e.g., GaN) on substrates (e.g., sapphire) poses many challenges on crystalline quality (e.g., grain boundaries, dislocations and other extended defects, and point defects) of the epitaxial layers due to lattice mismatch and coefficient of thermal expansion mismatch between the GaN layer and the underlying substrate, a foreign material. Differences in the coefficient of thermal expansion between the GaN layer and the underlying substrate result in large curvatures across the wafer, resulting during and post processing upon returning to room temperature, and the large mismatch in lattice constants leads to a high dislocation density, unwanted strain and defects propagating into the epitaxial GaN layer. In order to cope with these problems, stress relaxation strategies are employed, such as growing buffer layers between the GaN layer and the sapphire substrate, or counter balancing compressive and tensile strain by alternating appropriate material layers. However, by adding the buffer layer or stress relieving layers, the dislocation density may remain high and the manufacturing cost and complexity increases significantly because of the use of the same deposition techniques involved in growing the active device layers.